Important Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6) is a mandatory part of Windows Vista and later versions of Windows. We do not recommend that you disable IPv6 or its components. If you do, some Windows components may not function. Additionally, system startup will be delayed for 5 seconds if IPv6 is disabled by incorrectly, setting the DisabledComponents registry setting to a value of 0xfffffff. The correct value should be 0xff. For more information, see the "What are Microsoft's recommendations about disabling IPv6?" question in IPv6 for Microsoft Windows: Frequently Asked Questions.

Automatically disable or re-enable IPv6 or its components

Click the Download button for the procedure that you want to run. Then, click Run or Open in the File Download dialog box, and then follow the steps in the easy fix wizard.

Prefer IPv4 over IPv6 in prefix policies

Disable IPv6 on all nontunnel interfaces

Disable IPv6 on all tunnel interfaces

Disable IPv6 on nontunnel interfaces (except the loopback) and on IPv6 tunnel interface

More Information

You can do this by unbinding the adapter in the Local Area Connection Properties dialog box:

Click Start, and then click Control Panel.

Click Network and Sharing Center.

In the View your active networks area, click Local Area Connection, and then click Properties.

On the Networking tab, clear the Internet Protocol Version 6 (TCP/IPv6) check box, and then click OK.

Note The Internet Protocol Version 6 (TCP/IPv6) check box affects only the specific network adapter and will unbind IPv6 from the selected network adapter. To disable IPv6 on the host, use the DisabledComponents registry value. The DisabledComponents registry value does not affect the state of the check box. Therefore, even if the DisabledComponents registry key is set to disable IPv6, the check box in the Networking tab for each interface can still be checked. This is expected behavior.

Find the sixth bit of the data, and then set it to 0. Do not change any other bits. For example, if the current data is 11111111111111111111111111111111, the new data should be 11111111111111111111111111011111.

Change the data from binary to hexadecimal.

Set the hexadecimal value as the new value data for DisabledComponents.

Find the fifth bit of the data, and then set it to 0. Do not change any other bits. For example, if the source data is 11111111111111111111111111111111, the new data should be 11111111111111111111111111101111.

Change the data from binary to hexadecimal.

Set the hexadecimal value as the new value data for DisabledComponents.

Find the first bit of the data, and then set it to 0. Do not change any other bits. For example, if the source data is 11111111111111111111111111111111, the new data should be 11111111111111111111111111111110.

Change the data from binary to hexadecimal.

Set the hexadecimal value as the new value data for DisabledComponents.

Find the first bit of the data and the fifth bit of the data, and then set them both to 0. Do not touch any other bits. For example, if current data is 11111111111111111111111111111111, the new data should be 11111111111111111111111111101110.

Change the data from binary to hexadecimal.

Set the hexadecimal value as the new value data for DisabledComponents.

Notes

Administrators must create an .admx file to expose the settings in step 5 in a Group Policy setting.

You must restart your computer for these changes to take effect.

value other than 0x0 or 0x20 causes the Routing and Remote Access service to fail after this change takes effect.

By default, the 6to4 tunneling protocol is enabled in Windows 7, Windows Vista, Windows Server 2008 R2, and Windows Server 2008 when an interface is assigned a public IPv4 address (that is, an IPv4 address that is not in the ranges 10.0.0.0/8, 172.16.0.0/12, or 192.168.0.0/16). 6to4 automatically assigns an IPv6 address to the 6to4 tunneling interface for each such address that is assigned, and 6to4 will dynamically register these IPv6 addresses on the assigned DNS server. If this behavior is not desired, we recommend that you disable IPv6 tunnel interfaces on the affected hosts.